... a wild goose chase when I'm being led on one, so I left the matter there. Crozier's cronies Among the recent revelations from Consortium News concerning Keith Rupert Murdoch's clandestine relationship with the CIA (see Lobster 69) was the fact that in 1984 Mr Murdoch had funded a European 'fact finding' mission by that noted spook-cum-hack the late Brian Crozier. Consortium's piece did not explore what Crozier did to earn his keep, but a little niggle at the back of my head told me that this news wasn't entirely a surprise. When I finally got round to buying a second-hand copy of the book to refresh my memory, the answer was indeed staring me in the face from the ...

... 20 years, the CCF was both a propaganda operation and a rich source of recruitment access to a wide range of the political and cultural elites of other countries (This latter point is generally omitted-- and is from Coleman's book.) This was reviewed in the December 1990 edition of the conservative British journal The Salisbury Review by Brian Crozier, who would only be flattered to be described as one of our leading cold warriors. Declaring an interest, Crozier describes how he was appointed by the CCF in 1965 to develop the CCF news services. Crozier has always maintained he knew nothing of the CIA connection at the time and describes here how CCF hired (or recruited) ...

... much on MI5. Page 140 Winter 2009/10 Lobster 58 briefings against him, but also from the Gaitskellite wing of the Labour Party, which had never accepted him as leader of the party. Andrew has adopted the fallback position of the British secret state circa 1990: ignore Wallace, Gordon Winter, the private armies episode, the Crozier operations, the forgeries and the psy-ops, and focus on the John Ware interview with Wright in which he implied that the 'plot' consisted only of himself. Thus there was no plot; thus Wilson was just a paranoid old fool, a conspiracy theorist.6 Andrew portrays MI5 in the post WW2 era as cautious, apolitical bureaucrats, defending ...

... of Finance, Pandolfi; South African, General Fraser; former West German minister, Mertz; and Paris lawyer Jean Violet, director of the circle, with ties to western intelligence agencies, including MI6. The circle met on the 5th and 6th of January, 1980, in Zurich. Attending were: Violet, Count Huyn, Brian Crozier, Nicholas Elliot (ex MI6), General D. Stinwell (Stilwell?) (ex US Defence Intelligence Agency- DIA), and someone called Jameson (ex CIA). They discussed executive matters including: How to improve the international image of Franz Joseph Strauss (help was given in the January 1980 election: Crozier launched ...

... a general nature. In its first two years FWF has provided the US with a significant means to counter communist propaganda and has become a respected feature service on the way to a position of prestige in the journalism world." A hand-written note on the report added: "Run with the knowledge and co-operation of British intelligence." Brian Crozier (B) became President of FWF in February 1966. (He had known Whitney when Whitney was Ambassador to the UK.) FWF's managing editor was Iain Hamilton (B ), previously editor of the Spectator. Hamilton went on to become the Institute for the Study of Conflict's director of studies. (10) Supervised by the ...

... reproduction of a MARA report on the Socialist International, portraying it as a global socialist conspiracy. At one level this MARA report is absurd: the idea of the Socialist International meaning anything is just funny. But the level of ignorance on the American right is so high, almost anything is likely to be believed. Where too is Brian Crozier? Since the Langemann papers identified Crozier as a Pinay Circle member who was engaged in setting up a 'transnational security organisation', little has been heard of the man or of the progress of the group. Crozier's last known action-- yet another attempt to discredit the Institute for Policy Studies, the Washington-based liberal think tank with an ...

... essay on the British end of the current financial crisis, 'Well how did we get here? ', which originally appeared in Lobster 60, has been published as a Kindle edition, available from Amazon.co.uk for £1.98 Well, How Did We Get Here? A Brief History of the British Economy, Minus the Wishful Thinking RIP Whitney and Crozier T wo of the the subversion-hunters of the 1970s died since the last edition of Lobster. Ray Whitney, whom my brain still records as 'head of the Information Research Department [IRD] ', was the subject of an obituary in the Telegraph in August.7 There it was stated that he ended his diplomatic career as 'head of the FCO's ...

... agency, we now know quite a bit about IRD- certainly a great deal more than we did in 1978 when the organisation was closed. IRD finally got partly exposed because of its curious position of working with the intelligence services, but not for them; of being part of the Foreign Office but not controlled by it. As Brian Crozier hints at throughout his fascinating memoir, IRD became an almost totally independent force in the British secret state after the war. We can only guess why this curious position was allowed to develop and then continue for more than 20 years. Was it that it suited the rest of Whitehall not to have their hands on IRD lest they get ...

... Gable (who also appeared on behalf of the magazine) and Mr Hill, were in court to hear the verdict. Mr Hill had denied writing the article in question. Tinker, tailor, soldier, granny The Melita Norwood, 'Stalin's granny', story opened the columns of The Times on 13 September 1999 to no less than Brian Crozier.(1) Crozier told us, inter alia: For decades, I was one of the very few (sic) who tried to alert public opinion and successive governments to the Soviet threat.... in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon, the CIA was virtually paralysed in the most important ...

... Warsaw-based Miners Trade Union International, whose chief affiliate had been the Soviet miners' union. (p. 92) Well, were the former Soviet and Soviet bloc unions fronts for the state or not? My impression is that they were. (Ditto the Libyan unions.) Is it not the case, for example, as Brian Crozier was fond of reminding us, that the head of the Soviet equivalent of the TUC, the Soviet All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions in the mid 1970s was Alexander Shelepin, a former KGB head?(3) Is it not extremely likely, at the minimum, that Mr Scargill's colleague, Alain Simone, was a former ( ...